Many New Yorkers are struggling with their mental health and almost everyone recognizes it, including state lawmakers, who have started to respond with funding for new and existing programs.
That’s what makes it an important elections topic. To address the crisis, the state will have to lay out massive amounts of funding, develop more robust services, and make new laws.
Last year, legislators approved a $1 billion effort to transform the state’s mental health system. And when they passed the current budget this past spring, they included millions of dollars in additional funding for school-based mental health clinics and initiatives for school-aged youths, and for additional beds in state psychiatric facilities. They also approved new coverage requirements for commercial insurers.
In a news release, Gov. Kathy Hochul referred to the state’s mental health crisis as “the defining challenge of our time.”
But what is the mental health crisis? An article on the Pew Charitable Trusts website from December states that it’s happening on three fronts:
- The youth mental health crisis set by the surgeon general. One particular concern he laid out in an advisory last year: Social media can contribute to poor mental health in youths, including depression and anxiety. Legislators in states across the country, New York included, have been debating laws to rein in social media platform practices that can be harmful to youths, such as how algorithms serve them content.
- The crisis around care for people with serious mental health problems. They’re not getting the care they need, and that's contributing to problems such as homelessness and incarceration. The Mental Health Association in New York has called for more supportive housing to keep people with serious mental illness from becoming homeless. It’s also called for efforts to boost the pay for mental health workers and grow the workforce to address staffing shortages that prevent people from getting care promptly.
- The opioid use and overdose epidemics. Monroe County saw 346 opioid overdose deaths in 2022, the last year for which data is available. That’s up from 81 in 2014. County officials have also warned of a growing problem with fatal cocaine overdoses. They’ve responded by installing cases stocked with naloxone, which can reverse opioid overdoses, in publicly accessible places; by following up with overdose survivors to connect them with treatment; and by conducting street outreach and education programs. Some advocates have called on officials to clear the way for safe consumption sites, which can help prevent overdose deaths and can serve as an entry point for getting people treatment.
All three crises overlap to some extent, the Pew article said.
And since they are very complex, each of the crises requires multipronged efforts to address them. They all require funding and resources of some sort and additional efforts to establish and expand community-based programs.
But lawmakers aren’t always in agreement about how to do that.
